Unknown photographer · Public domain

Selznick produced Gone with the Wind, steering its famously chaotic production to a 1939 release that broke box-office records and won him an Academy Award for Best Picture; he won it again the following year for Rebecca. The Academy gave him the Irving Thalberg Award, its top honor for a producer, in recognition of that achievement. Son and son-in-law of studio moguls, he left the security of studio employment at RKO to become one of Hollywood's first independent producers.